Training and Development Evaluation

Introduction

The primary purpose of this proposal is to develop and delivery of a training programme for all employees of ABC Limited. This proposal also includes training recommendations for all managers, supervisors, and employees of ABC Limited. The primary objective of these training programmes is to develop skills, knowledge, and attitude of the employees of ABC Limited. The secondary objective is to develop an organisational culture which helps to effectively perform as a marketing firm. The ultimate objective is to gain the competitive advantage through training and development and obtain superior profit and performances.    

“The training consultants” is a small business which started in 1995 with the purpose of developing and delivering high-quality training. The company specializes in developing technical skills, management development and leadership developments in business organisations. Our clients are consisted with well established organisations in United Kingdom and some other organisations in European Union. Widely spread clients’ network is our strength. Also the firm has more experience in developing training and development programmes for marketing firms. As a value the firm always keeps the confidentiality of their clients and not disclose any information to a third party. Thus, “the training consultants” are capable enough for providing consultation facilities for ABC Limited.     

Bing a newly launch marketing firm, the main concern of ABC Limited is competency development. The organisation needs to become a learning organisation which opens for innovation. The ABC Company limited has paid their attention for new training and development programmes with the new competition of the marketing field. The company has to gain competitive advantage through training and development activities to face to the existing competition in the market place.                  

Background to the organisation

The strategy of ABC Company limited has been identified as the interactive strategy. The purpose of this strategy is to offers superior quality service for their customers in an efficient manner. According to this strategy the company will face to the higher competition by providing superior customer service. The company’s strategy itself has defined the customers into two main parts. Those are internal customers and external customers. The internal customers have defined as its all employees who include managers, supervisors and employees. The external customers have defined as individuals who obtain the services of ABC Limited. Thus, companies interactive strategy has pave the way for peoples’ development of the organisation.  

It has been identified that ABC Limited has an adaptability culture. The adaptability culture can be defined as “a culture characterized by values that support the company’s ability to interpret and translate signals from the environment into new behaviour responses” (Daft, 2010). Scholars have identified this culture as a high-risk culture when compare to others. But this culture allow for creativity and more empowerment.

The internal context of the organisation can be identified as management, employees and culture of the organisation. Also the external context of the organisation is consisted with customers, competitors, suppliers and labour market. Bothe internal and external contexts of the organisation have influenced for the peoples’ development activities of the organisation.

The company’s total workforce is 850 which include all managers, supervisors and employees. Many new HR strategies have been introduced to the company with interactive strategy and adaptability culture. The company has recognized employees as its internal customers and have taken all possible steps to gain competitive advantage thorough its employees. The company has recently introduced new human resources development plan which mainly focus on performance management and, training and development. Thus developing people is a main concern of the company and considerable budget has been allocated for this purpose.

Developing training and development vision of ABC Limited.

Training and development vision is the key directive of future training and development activities of the organisation (Leopold and Harries, 2009). Thus, is it vital to develop a training and development vision for ABC Limited. The first step of developing vision is consisted with need assessment for training. This need assessment is consisted with three main areas namely organisational analysis, task analysis and person analysis. The second step is consisted with identifying internal and external environment of the organisation. For the purpose of identifying internal and external environment of ABC Company Limited, the SWOT analysis will be carried out. In the SWOT analysis, internal strength and weakness, and also external opportunities and threats in relation to training and development will be analyzed.      

Organisation analysis – the organisation analysis is consisted with examination of the environment, strategies, and resources of the organisation to determine where training emphasis should be placed (Cascio, 1986). As identified above the ABC Limited has more competitive environment in the market place. More new comers have entered to the market and have created competitive market place. The training and development strategy of ABC Limited should address this competitive environment of the market place and its ultimate goal should be achieving competitive advantage through training and development activities. The future strategies of ABC Limited have been identified as interactive strategies which need effective training for employees. The organisation has continuously shown higher profit margin for past five years and 2% of its total expenditure has allocated for training and development. This strong financial environment has shown the company’s financial strength for future training and development activities.    

Task analysis – the task analysis is the process of determining what the content of a training programme should be on the basis of a study of the tasks and duties involved in the job (Cole, 2002). Being a marketing firm more employees of ABC Limited are involved with sales and marketing. Apart from that administration, human resources, finance, purchasing, logistics and cleaning functions are existed. Also tasks can be divided into two main parts namely non-managerial tasks and managerial tasks. Although, ABC Limited is not a diversified business, the task analysis is shown that ABC Limited has considerable tasks and those tasks should be addressed at the training and development strategy. Specially the nature of ABC’s business says marketing, finance and human resources are the vital tasks of the organisation.              

Person analysis – the person analysis is involved with determination of the specific individuals who need training (Cole, 2002). The ABC Limited has effective performance management system and this performance management system has identified the performance gaps of respective employees. The performance evaluation is continues process at ABC Limited and end of every financial year a formal performance evaluation is conducted. At the performance evaluation both qualitative and quantitative methods are used to identify the performance gaps of respective employees. For an instance if a sales officer is under performing, the root course for the poor performance will be identified at the evaluation processes. These performances gaps can be determined as training need of respective employees.

The above need assessment clearly indicates the training and development needs of ABC Limited. Both organisations and person fit for training and development has been identified at the need assessment. 

SWOT analysis for ABC Company Limited

Strengths Ø  Strong financial background Ø  Internal resources for training and development Ø  Flexible organisation culture	Weaknesses Ø  Non diversified organisation   Ø  The flexible culture has lead employees to take own decisions Ø  Limited experience in sales and marketing
Opportunities Ø  More training and development resources for sales and marketing Ø  Competency development will lead to achieving competitive advantage Ø  Opportunities for diversifying the business	Threats Ø  ROI on training can be lower than the expected level Ø  The success of the training and development is more depended on the enthusiasm of employees. Ø  Training and development is not the only fact which can lead the organisation for success.

According to the above SWOT analysis it can be assumed that training and development programme of ABC Limited may help to achieve the corporate goal but still it has significant risk. Thus, considering the above all analysis the training and development vision of ABC Limited can be identified as follows;

“Developing capable human resources who can lead the ABC Limited for achieving its corporate goals”

This vision statement is consisted with two main parts. Those are developing the capabilities of human resources and achieving corporate goals. The capability development of employees is consisted with skill, knowledge and attitude development of employees. Thus the ABC Limited’s training and development programme should be more focused on the competency development of its employees. This capability development finally will lead to achieving organisation’s desired goals. For achieving desired goals, the organisation need good leadership base and for this purpose the organisation need to develop its future leaders. Thus, ABC Limited’s training and development programme should include leadership development programmes.

       

Proposed training and development offer for ABC Limited

According to the above analysis the training and development requirements of ABC Limited takes three folds. Those are developing technical skills of employees, management development and leadership development.

It can be identified that developing technical skills of employees as a kind of non-managerial training. This is mainly because more technical employees of ABC Limited are fallen to non-managerial category. Thus, non-managerial training methods will be used to develop technical skills of employees. These non-managerial training methods are consisted with below mentioned broader areas (Bohlander and Scott, 2010).

   

Ø  On-the-job training

Ø  Apprenticeship training

Ø  Cooperative training, internships, and governmental training

Ø  Classroom instruction

Ø  Programmed instructions

Ø  Audiovisual methods

Ø  Simulation method

Ø  E-learning and learning management systems (LMS)

When consider the organisation environment and culture of ABC Limited, the on-the-job training can play a vital role in training and development activities in the organisation. On-the-job training is a method by which employees are given hands-on experience with instructions from their supervisor or other trainer (Armstrong, 2008). This is a low cost method for the company and also can be addressed broader area of training and development. The apprenticeship is another vital area of the training programme of ABC Limited. Since the company is involved with sales and marketing these kinds of training are very important for employees’ competency development. The apprenticeship training can be identified as a system of training in which a worker entering the skilled trades is given through instruction and experience, both on and off the job, in the practical and theoretical aspects of the work (Armstrong, 2008). The apprenticeship with good succession planning will pave the way for developing future leaders’ base for ABC Limited. Also the ABC limited should conduct corporate trainings for its employees by using formal methods. These corporate trainings will combine practical on-the-job experience with formal education. Internship is one of the sub areas of corporate training and it will lead school levers to join ABC Limited. Also classroom instructions and programmed instructions are vital for ABC Limited. Those kinds of trainings are very formal but it will directly help to competency development of non-managerial employees of the organisation. Also class room training has been identified as a good method for addressing key technical areas of the organisation. Specially subjects like customer care should be address by classroom instructions. With the existing competition, ABC Limited should use new technological methods for training and development. New technological methods can be identified as audiovisual methods, simulation methods, and e-learning. These systems will help for quick learning and it will finally help to absorb modern technology to the organisation.  

Management development and leadership development are directly involved with management development programmes. Thus the ABC Limited should follow management development methods for the competency development of its managers and future leaders. These methods for management development, which suit for ABC Limited can be identified as follows (Bohlander and Scott, 2010);

Ø  On-the-job experience

Ø  Seminars and conferences

Ø  Case studies

Ø  Management games and simulations

Ø  Role-playing

Ø  Behavior modelling

As identified above many of training methods which are applicable for developing non-managers can be used for developing managers as well. But these management development methods are mainly focused on developing the mind-set of managers. Most of mangers have sufficient skills for performing their jobs but they need to adjust their mind-set for future challengers of the organisation. Thus, it is totally differed from non-management level training. This is applicable to the ABC Limited as well. Also the management development and leadership development activities of ABC Limited will mainly focus on achieving interactive strategy of the organisation. Thus, specially these leadership development programmes will align managers for achieving organisation’s desired goals.

Apart from on-the-job training all other management development programmes are very structured. Seminars, conferences, case studies and behaviour modelling are involved with high competency and leadership development activities which help ABC Limited’s managers to achieve future goals.

The training and development evaluation strategy

The training and development programmes should be evaluated to measure its effectiveness (Beardwell et al, 2004). The purpose of training evaluation has three main areas as follows;

Ø  Measure the extent of improving learning of the organisation

Ø  How extent training and development has affected behaviour on the job

Ø  How extent training and development has improved the performance of the job

For achieving above goals, it can be recommended four (4) basic criteria for ABC Limited for evaluating training. Those criteria can be identified as reactions, learning, behaviour and results (Amos et al, 2009). The participants’ reaction is an effective and very simple method to evaluate the training. In this connection positive reaction or feedback is vital to understand the effectiveness of training and development programmes. However, the effectiveness cannot be guaranteed on participants’ reaction or feedback. Thus, learning is a good tool to measure the effectiveness of training. The trainee actual learning is a good tool to evaluate training. This measure can be done before and after the training. It is recommended ABC Limited to conduct pre and post training evaluation methods to measure the effectiveness of its training. Behaviour is another criterion which can be used to measure the effectiveness of training programmes. In this method transfer of training is important. If the training has been transferred to respective employees, a behavioural change is expected. The Return on Investment (ROI) on training is a more quantitative method which can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of training and development activities of the organisation. In this method financial cost for training and development will be measured with the productivity of employees.

Recommendations 

Being ABC Limited’s business is sales and marketing; the organisation is facing to more competition in the market place. Because of this extended competition, the organisation should work towards achieving competitive advantage through training and development activities.

The need assessment and SWOT analysis clearly indicate the training and development requirements of ABC Limited. It has been identified that both non-managerial and managerial employees should develop through these programmes.

On-the-job training, apprenticeship training, cooperative training, internships, governmental training, classroom instruction, programmed instructions, audiovisual methods, simulation method, e-learning and learning management systems (LMS) are recommended training methods for non-managerial competency development at ABC Limited. Also, on-the-job experience, seminars, conferences, case studies, management games, simulations, role-playing, are behavior modelling are recommended for management and leadership development at ABC Limited. 

Further, it is recommended to follow effective training evaluation system for ABC Limited. Reactions, learning, behaviour and results are recommended as training and development evaluation criteria at ABC Limited.

References

Amos, T., Ristow, A., Ristow, L., and Pearse, N. J. (2009) Human Resource Management, Juta     and      Company Ltd

Armstrong, M. (2008) Strategic Human Resource Management: A Guide to Action, Kogan Page   Publishers

Beardwell, I. et al. (2004) Human Resource Management a Contemporary Approach, 4^th ed.        Prentice Hall, Harlow.

Bohlander, G., and Scott, S. (2010) Principles of Human Resources Management, South Western Cengage Learning.

Bruce, A. (2006) How to Motivate Every Employee: 24 Proven Tactics to Spark Productivity          the       Workplace, McGraw-Hill Professional

Callaway, P. L. (2007) the Relationship of Organizational Trust and Job Satisfaction: An     Analysis in the U.S. Federal Work Force, Universal-Publishers

Cascio, W. F. (1986) Managing Human Resources, McGraw-Hill, New York

Cole, G.A. (2002) Personnel and Human Resources Management, 5^th ed. ELST, London

David, D. (2009) Factors Affecting the Performance of Employees in an organization,        Business          and Finance Article

Daft, R. L. (2010) New era of Management, South –Western Cengage Learning

European Society of Association Executives. “Library”, Lifelong learning: The  Opportunity for   

European Associations in the knowledge economy,  http://www.esae.org/library_items.htm, accessed April 2012

Johnson, G., Whittington, R., and Scholes, K. (2011) Exploring Strategy, Ninth Edition, Prentice Hall

Leopold, John. & Harris , L., (2009) The strategic managing of human resources, 2^nd ed, Prentice Hall, London

Luthans, F. (1995) Organizational Behavior, McGraw-Hill, New York

Marchington, M. & Wilkinson, A., (2006) Core Personnel and Development, IPD Publishing,       London

McPhaul, John. (2005) Toyota Uses Innovative Employee Evaluation System. Caribbean

            Business

Mullins, L. (2005) Management and Organizational Behavior, 7^th ed. Prentice Hall, Pearson          Education, Edinburgh

Robbins, S.P., et al. (1998) Organizational Behavior, Prentice Hall, Australia

Storey, J. (1992), Developments in the Management of Human Resources, Blackwell, Oxford

Stride, C., Wall, T. D., and Catley, N. (2007) Measures of job satisfaction, organisational   commitment, mental health, and job-related well-being, John Wiley and Sons